Ha ha ha... Jesus Farking Christ. Get over yourself Perry Mason. I section out the previous blah blah blah blah in most of my responses to avoid the wall of text.

Like I'm doing it to avoid some salient, argument busting comment you made... don't flatter yourself.

I'm gonna go pour used oil down a storm drain and club some baby seals now. I might even go across the street to the Welfare office and yell at all the smelly poor people. Wanna join me? You can hug them and give them your money.

BojanglesPaladin:CaliNJGuy: So EVERY SINGLE YEAR the price of a Big Mac has gone up. So what?

So clearly there is a contradiction to leadmetal's assertion that large, high volume companies will do anything before they will raise the price of their product because of a perceived idea that consumers have an "ideal price" they are willing to pay and exceeding that will cause them to stop purchasing. Demonstrably, so long as the prices increases are nominal at each interval, they will be absorbed with little notice by the consumer.

If you roll up to Mickey D's to order that 24 oz. sugar water that was .87 cents, and the crackle voice tells you that it is now .94 cents, will you drive off in a huff? No. You will pay it because it's only less than a thin dime's difference, and next time you go that is the "normal" price.

I doubt McDonald's really, truly cares that much about the wage increases (although DOUBLING it all at once might be a bit much). I worked there for a year and a half and had three raises from 3.85 to 4.75. Labor costs can be absorbed as they inch those prices up. 20 years ago they started kids out at 3.85, now it's 7.50. They are doing just fine.

And we pay more than double what we used to, and the prices increased even when there was no increase in the minimum wage.

If people are willing to pay more why isn't the price higher now?Are these corporations run by dumb farks who are leaving money on the table?Those arguing with me on this point need to explain why profits are being left on the table. If the price can be raised and people just shrug, then the price has been too low to achieve maximum profits.

I've been developing product for many years now. The last thing to change is retail price. Never seen retail price just go up because costs went up. Only when it was thought people would pay the increase or there was no other choice but to cancel the product. I've seen products canceled because they simply could not be made for what people were willing to pay.

Also, labor isn't the only cost in a product. In fact it's often a small percentage of it. Inflation driving up material and energy costs is usually the big problem, not labor. But labor increases happen to and are dealt with the same way.

The employees should be welcome to try to form a union, and their employer should be free to fire them for beginning to organize. What's the problem again?

They should be free to start a union, but companies should be prevented by law from firing employ for attempts to unionize.

Unions are half of what's wrong with this country. We had a whole generation where tons of kids only aspired to get through high school so they could get a overpaid union job with their Dad, doing one simple task. The whole family's desire for higher education was curtailed by the promise of easy money. Daddy didn't finish 8th grade and he makes $90,000 a year at the Chrysler plant. So Johnny squeaks through high school to follow in his footsteps. When the rug was pulled out from under them we have generations of trenched in mediocrity. No one family member for three generations ever went to wanted to go to college. We're left with uneducated, unskilled worKers looking for $45 and hour jobs in cesspools like Detroit. Despite the fact that the only skill the have is bolting a bumper on a LeBaron.

Meanwhile in India and China parents are pushing their kids to learn because they knew its the of true way out of the rut they are stuck in making 15 cents and hour. Kids see this and are leaning. Leaving the US behind in learning and taking all our jerbs.

BojanglesPaladin:TuteTibiImperes: It's not difficult to run a successful business if you've got money to start with and you don't mind treating your employees like a commodity, paying the lowest wages you can get away with while extracting the most output.

It's also not difficult to run a successful business if you had less than $500 in startup capital, you treat your employees with respect and pay them a modest wage with full health care, life insurance, and a 401K while getting quality work and high productivity in return.

Probably a lot easier, actually.

YOU are crazy. If you have $500 in startup capital, you have no employees. You have yourself. And that's it. No office, no nothing.

so demand increased out of the ether? It had nothing to do with people being paid more and more year after year?

Are you really that dense?Eventually as those foreign products became good enough and at good enough prices and as they built up their marketing and distribution, people started buying those products. They weren't buying cheaper foreign products because their wages were going up.

TuteTibiImperes:If it puts some of the stores out of business, oh well. Competitors will step in that are able to make the numbers work and can pay living wages while still earning a profit. Maybe it won't be a $150K profit per store, and maybe they won't be able to pay the franchise fees that McDonalds charges, but there's still money to be made and someone will be willing to do it for the amount of profit that can still be made while paying a living wage.

That's some AWESOME logic by the way.

'So what if paying these wages drives established businesses with a proven business model out of business, leaving all the employees unemployed. Somehow (magically) some as yet undetermined magical mystery fast food chain will poof into existence offering an even higher wage (by serving unicorn burgers) and everyone will live happily ever after.'

Have you somehow not noticed that Burger King, Chik-Fil-A, Wendy's, Subway, Jack in the Box, Bojangles, Whataburger, Sonic, White Castle, etc. ALL follow the same basic wage levels? Surely if there was some heretofore amazing fast food business model that worked by paying high turnover unskilled workers double the prevailing wage, they would be a break-away success in the last 60 years of fast food?

Ha ha ha... Jesus Farking Christ. Get over yourself Perry Mason. I section out the previous blah blah blah blah in most of my responses to avoid the wall of text.

Like I'm doing it to avoid some salient, argument busting comment you made... don't flatter yourself.

I'm gonna go pour used oil down a storm drain and club some baby seals now. I might even go across the street to the Welfare office and yell at all the smelly poor people. Wanna join me? You can hug them and give them your money.

CaliNJGuy:Pray 4 Mojo: CaliNJGuy: Yes it is. And if it isn't you should be asking yourself why at Tesco's latest AGM shareholders agitated loud and long for Tesco to shed itself of its US division Fresh & Easy sooner rather than later (F&E has cost Tesco billions thus far and never turned a profit). I can't believe they aren't overjoyed to be losing that kind of money.

He he he... awesome. I've had extensive experience interacting with Fresh and Easy on a business to business level.

They are a management disaster. Total, complete and unmitigated disaster... and still hemorrhaging money.

I would expect that their story is going to be taught in business schools some day as a cautionary example.

I work for a company that has been a technology vendor to F&E since their inception and couldn't agree w/you more. My first contact w/them was at the mock store they built in their El Segundo facility and the walls couldn't contain the hubris coming out of that place. They are getting what they deserve.

Ha ha ha!! We should totally tell F&E stories! My company built a few of their stores in Vegas... that are now shuttered. One I built never even opened. Still sitting there last I checked. One of my colleagues said it best when asked WTF happened to F&E: "Four jackasses from England got on a plane to come over here and show us dumb Yanks how things really work. While they were swinging their big dicks around... America just chuckled and kicked 'em square in the balls."

KeatingFive:YOU are crazy. If you have $500 in startup capital, you have no employees. You have yourself. And that's it. No office, no nothing.

And yet I did. Not all at once, of course, and dear lord was it hard, but not one paycheck was late or missed (though maybe a rent check here or there) and we've been doing fine for about a decade now.

jst3p:'m gonna go pour used oil down a storm drain and club some baby seals now. I might even go across the street to the Welfare office and yell at all the smelly poor people. Wanna join me? You can hug them and give them your money.

Fortunately, I live across the street from the Salvation Army soup kitchen, so I can just whip half-empty lattes at the poor from my home office window.

Do you think someone has a GED from high school, wears his pants at the bottom of his ass, and really really sucks at math... do you think they are worth $15/hour?

The reason you are paid minimum wage is because you are more than likely a person who always achieved the minimum in life. Grades/savings/common sense. I'd be willing to bet a sizeable sum that even if you put all that extra money into the hands of "those people" they wouldn't know to handle is properly. They wouldn't pay off their credit cards, or student loans, it would be spent on dumb crap that dumb people like to buy. Rims, booze, cigarettes, partying, eating out, a new car you (still) really can't afford.

Wow, what an asshole you are. Writing off millions of Americans. Let them eat cake eh?

So I return to my previous question. How much more are you willing to pay for all sorts of consumer goods to pay more to the people who bothered to go through all the difficult schooling and long hours on the job so you could buy them? People ask why so few americans go into engineering and science these days. But they rarely have the right answer. The work/reward ratio sucks.

Keep that work/reward idea in mind when making interventions like the minimum wage. If employers demand more work for the greater reward then people are going to be knocked off the job ladder. If the lower rung jobs just pay more and everyone else remains the same then more people will find these lower rung jobs good enough. If everyone is raised all that has been accomplished to shift the scale over and now all the people on the bottom rungs are just as poor as they were before while the numbers are larger.

To answer your question would mean accepting your faulty logic, so I'm not going to answer. I do have a question for you though. So its OK to you that there are so many homeless people, people who haven't been to a doctor in year, can't afford to send their kids to college, etc? Scrapping by is OK to you? That is the embodiment of a great nation that treats its poorest like moochers/worthless bums? I think not.

stuhayes2010:ferretman: FTA: "In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its <a data-cke-saved-href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/04/news/companies/mc donalds_jobs/index.ht m" target="_hplink">more than 500,000 U.S. employees."

Yes...there are no other costs besides employee pay and benefits. What the student hasn't taken into account, if minimum wage was doubled, the rising costs associated with the suppliers, the ones who manufacture the beef patties, chicken nuggets, soda syrup, shake mix, french fries, fish sandwiches, packaging suppliers, etc. These are all manufactured by other companies under contract to, in this case, McDonalds and are typically union-shops (at least on the east coast). If everyone's wages increase the product cost will increase and there will be less jobs.

That's why items are the same price at Costco who pays its employees $45k on average versus SAMs Club who pays minimum wage.

That really is an incomplete and stupid comparison.

The average profit per employee is $10k for Costco and 7,400 for Walmart.

So for every $1M in salary they pay, Costco gets $222k in profit and Walmart gets $423K.

That is just salary, so if they pay more for benefits, the Costco picture is far worse.

leadmetal:If people are willing to pay more why isn't the price higher now?Are these corporations run by dumb farks who are leaving money on the table?

Perhaps you will notice a rational middle ground between your original assertions that companies will do anything to avoid a price increase and my observation that prices can and are increased in small increments over time with no negative affect on sales.

You said McDonalds would absorb labor costs rather than increase the price of a BigMac. And yet, nearly every single year, they increased the price of a BigMac, even during large stretches where there was no increase in minimum wages. Did you notice that I provided a 25 year breakdown?

leadmetal:I've been developing product for many years now. The last thing to change is retail price. Never seen retail price just go up because costs went up.

All well and good. I'm willing to just grant that you are a veritable maestro of retail market economics. But you said McDonalds's would do anything rather than raise prices. And yet they do so constantly and regularly. I can't speak to what you have seen, but the facts seem to contradict your assertion. I'm sorry.

Pray 4 Mojo:CaliNJGuy: Pray 4 Mojo: CaliNJGuy: Yes it is. And if it isn't you should be asking yourself why at Tesco's latest AGM shareholders agitated loud and long for Tesco to shed itself of its US division Fresh & Easy sooner rather than later (F&E has cost Tesco billions thus far and never turned a profit). I can't believe they aren't overjoyed to be losing that kind of money.

He he he... awesome. I've had extensive experience interacting with Fresh and Easy on a business to business level.

They are a management disaster. Total, complete and unmitigated disaster... and still hemorrhaging money.

I would expect that their story is going to be taught in business schools some day as a cautionary example.

I work for a company that has been a technology vendor to F&E since their inception and couldn't agree w/you more. My first contact w/them was at the mock store they built in their El Segundo facility and the walls couldn't contain the hubris coming out of that place. They are getting what they deserve.

Ha ha ha!! We should totally tell F&E stories! My company built a few of their stores in Vegas... that are now shuttered. One I built never even opened. Still sitting there last I checked. One of my colleagues said it best when asked WTF happened to F&E: "Four jackasses from England got on a plane to come over here and show us dumb Yanks how things really work. While they were swinging their big dicks around... America just chuckled and kicked 'em square in the balls."

You knew the writing was on the wall for them when they began the practice of "mothballing" newly constructed sites. When it costs you less to pay the lease on a site that isn't generating any revenue versus operating the site something has gone seriously wrong. And whoever was in charge of property acquisition should be fired (prob are by now). Some of the locations are just stupid. Can't even be seen from the street. If you haven't discovered it already go here https://twitter.com/FreshNEasyBuzz . They guy covers F&E as an independent and has lots of insider info. Good stuff.

You mean to be snarky, but that's how today's robber barons have framed it. Not just "Work or starve" but "If we were to raise wages even 50 cents an hour, our huge multinational would be forced either to raise prices exorbitantly or go out of business thus unemploying all our workers."

Neither is true. Of course, just raising wages across the board is not the only solution; but it's not the only problem either.

Funny how the Fark-libs are always the ones to criticize and denigrate others but when it comes to themselves taking some sort of action that they are preaching others to do .. There is always an excuse why they can't or couldn't..... shocked.

And anyone can say whatever they like online with little way to fact check. I could say I have a 12" wang, a Bentley, and a standing booty call arrangement with Olivia Munn, but that doesn't make any of that true.

It's not difficult to run a successful business if you've got money to start with and you don't mind treating your employees like a commodity, paying the lowest wages you can get away with while extracting the most output.

tenpoundsofcheese:That really is an incomplete and stupid comparison.The average profit per employee is $10k for Costco and 7,400 for Walmart.So for every $1M in salary they pay, Costco gets $222k in profit and Walmart gets $423K.That is just salary, so if they pay more for benefits, the Costco picture is far worse.

But since EVERY ONE cares so much about the poor unskilled, helpless, and abused workers, why doesn't everyone shop at Costco instead of Sam's? Especially considering that there would be no additional cost to do so? We all have a choice between a 5 Gallon drum of ice cream at Sam's for $12 and a 5 Gallon drum of ice cream at Costco for $12, but ONE of these places abuses its employees and one of them gives them more money and spa days.

Fade2black:You are not entitled to anything, snowflake. Fast food is a job a monkey could do. You are a wage slave. Fast Food and Retail are jobs that get you to learn the real world, then you get off your ass and get educated to get out of the doldrums. If you decided to drop out of high school or you can't go to school because you decided to have 3 kids, that is what normal people call "poor life choices".

Spoken like a true idiot, what about people like me who have degrees but still can't find a job? And before you're retarded reactionary mind leaps to it I sent out 14 paper copies of my resume and 32 via email yesterday morning as I do on a monthly basis. I'll get if I'm lucky four or five calls for interviews against desperate middle aged boomers with literally ten times as much experience in my field than I do. Who now due the shiat economy are willing to go to work for entry level wages same as me. They have families and boats and mortgages so they need that job a lot more than I do and people doing interviews know that. So guess what happens next? Spoiler alert they give the job to the guy with 20 years experience and incentive to stay put. Since I got out of school I have managed a coffee shop, worked at a TV station as a sound engineer and ran a register at a pr0n shop. My degree is in human resource management and demography.

Sadly the pr0n shop paid the best it was a depressing day when they closed their doors.

bbfreak:MatrixOutsider: If you chose not to go to school or learn a skilled trade, then why is it McDonalds problem if you chose to work for them at an agreed upon hourly wage that is common for an unskilled worker?

Well, it should be something you care about seeing as a taxpayer you pay for McDonalds/Wal-Mart employees to live off welfare to make up the difference.

If your job mainly consists of running a register, filling/emptying fry baskets, stocking shelves or collecting shopping carts - you're a fool if you consider it long-term life-sustaining employment. Jobs like these are - and always have been - for high-school and college age kids to put a few bucks in their pocket - and perhaps a second part-time job to augment one's full-time career income.

Right out of H/S - I worked for a department store for a year. There was no way in hell I would have ever considered staying in that position for 40 years, and 'retiring' from that place. No one should. I did it to save money for college expenses, period. At the time, 80% of the people who worked there were people around my age. Anyone who was older was in Management --- they were certainly paid much more then the floor staff was - and they were never stocking shelves, running the register, or collecting the shopping carts.

Yeah_Right:bbfreak: MatrixOutsider: If you chose not to go to school or learn a skilled trade, then why is it McDonalds problem if you chose to work for them at an agreed upon hourly wage that is common for an unskilled worker?

Well, it should be something you care about seeing as a taxpayer you pay for McDonalds/Wal-Mart employees to live off welfare to make up the difference.

If your job mainly consists of running a register, filling/emptying fry baskets, stocking shelves or collecting shopping carts - you're a fool if you consider it long-term life-sustaining employment. Jobs like these are - and always have been - for high-school and college age kids to put a few bucks in their pocket - and perhaps a second part-time job to augment one's full-time career income.

Right out of H/S - I worked for a department store for a year. There was no way in hell I would have ever considered staying in that position for 40 years, and 'retiring' from that place. No one should. I did it to save money for college expenses, period. At the time, 80% of the people who worked there were people around my age. Anyone who was older was in Management --- they were certainly paid much more then the floor staff was - and they were never stocking shelves, running the register, or collecting the shopping carts.

Those must be some incredibly high-end fast food eateries and department stores you're talking about. I've been in both, and the staff is mixed as far as ages go. There is no youth on the floor, old people in management split.

ReapTheChaos:Marcus Aurelius: ferretman: FTA: "In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its <a data-cke-saved-href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/04/news/companies/mc donalds_jobs/index.ht m" target="_hplink">more than 500,000 U.S. employees."

Yes...there are no other costs besides employee pay and benefits. What the student hasn't taken into account, if minimum wage was doubled, the rising costs associated with the suppliers, the ones who manufacture the beef patties, chicken nuggets, soda syrup, shake mix, french fries, fish sandwiches, packaging suppliers, etc. These are all manufactured by other companies under contract to, in this case, McDonalds and are typically union-shops (at least on the east coast). If everyone's wages increase the product cost will increase and there will be less jobs.

Thank God you are nowhere near reality.

Setting the minimum wage close to the true living minimum wage floats all boats, and the economy grows much more quickly.

While companies like Walmart and McDonald's probably could pay $15 and hour by only raising prices on each item they sell a few cents, most smaller businesses would go bankrupt if they had to pay that much. Not only that, but other people start demanding pay raises as well. People with skills and experience who were making $15-20 an hour before minimum wage went up are going to demand an appropriate raise as well, and by all rights they deserve it.

After a year or two, when all the wage and price increases have finally settled down, the economy will be right back to where it was before, and $15 an hour minimum wage wont buy a damn thing more than it did at $7.25.

And this is why the problem is wealth disparity, not wages at any given tier.

But fark common sense, yay capitalism, and anyone who disagrees with that statement is a commie!

What are the actual chances of wages being increased? Anyone making book on it? In the New World Order, I don't think anything like Haymarket (the indirect eventual consequence - 8hr. day) is possible. Taxpayers providing corporate welfare (safety net programs for low income earners/Dept. of Defense) - in order to keep the CEOS/shareholders happy - seems to be preventing more unpredictable labor troubles, at present. That these Corporations are not paying for the `Risk-Off' that accrues from being allowed to run their businesses on this continent (Lincoln was right - no foreign invader will ever cross the Blue Ridge or take a drink from the Ohio), surrounded by missile subs and thousands of miles of ocean. `Globalization should be compassed by what can be allowed for the Good of the Republic - if that doesn't meet some Corp. standards - then let them set up shop in Zimbabwe. We have been paying for the most expensive Foreign Aid, over the past 30 or so years, ever -

You're helping to raise the living standards of suffering billions of souls! Aren't you feeling better about working at Wally World/Mickey D's???

Low skill labor, in this country, started being farked, seriously, when all the textile factories started moving lock, stock and barrel to China in the Mid-`70's. The idea that one should allow a U.S. based concern to set up a factory in another country, that didn't sell 90% of its output to residents of that country, was insane (insanely profitable - so long expensive labor overhead).

However, luck (as the man said) is the residue of design. I'd suggest something like Nursing (15min. a day studying anatomy/ATP/Krebs). Keep it up (it's not as if there aren't enough resources on the web for anyone with an old Intel P3 an a dialup connection - download the texts while you're sleeping).

When you are serving the burgers, keep your future in focus:

Seventy nine million Americans are estimated to have prediabetes, meaning that they are at grave risk of developing diabetes.Currently, more than one-third of American adults-more than 72 million people-and 17 percent of children in the U.S. are obese, placing them at heightened risk for developing diabetes.http://notme.com/dpca/diabetesFacts.html

There's good money in debriding/cleaning/dressing all the eventual decubitis ulcers and stumps...

ScaryBottles:Fade2black: You are not entitled to anything, snowflake. Fast food is a job a monkey could do. You are a wage slave. Fast Food and Retail are jobs that get you to learn the real world, then you get off your ass and get educated to get out of the doldrums. If you decided to drop out of high school or you can't go to school because you decided to have 3 kids, that is what normal people call "poor life choices".

Spoken like a true idiot, what about people like me who have degrees but still can't find a job? And before you're retarded reactionary mind leaps to it I sent out 14 paper copies of my resume and 32 via email yesterday morning as I do on a monthly basis. I'll get if I'm lucky four or five calls for interviews against desperate middle aged boomers with literally ten times as much experience in my field than I do. Who now due the shiat economy are willing to go to work for entry level wages same as me. They have families and boats and mortgages so they need that job a lot more than I do and people doing interviews know that. So guess what happens next? Spoiler alert they give the job to the guy with 20 years experience and incentive to stay put. Since I got out of school I have managed a coffee shop, worked at a TV station as a sound engineer and ran a register at a pr0n shop. My degree is in human resource management and demography.

Sadly the pr0n shop paid the best it was a depressing day when they closed their doors.

BojanglesPaladin:tenpoundsofcheese: That really is an incomplete and stupid comparison.The average profit per employee is $10k for Costco and 7,400 for Walmart.So for every $1M in salary they pay, Costco gets $222k in profit and Walmart gets $423K.That is just salary, so if they pay more for benefits, the Costco picture is far worse.

But since EVERY ONE cares so much about the poor unskilled, helpless, and abused workers, why doesn't everyone shop at Costco instead of Sam's? Especially considering that there would be no additional cost to do so? We all have a choice between a 5 Gallon drum of ice cream at Sam's for $12 and a 5 Gallon drum of ice cream at Costco for $12, but ONE of these places abuses its employees and one of them gives them more money and spa days.

Why doesn't everyone shop at Costco?

My family does... Costco and Trader Joes for everything we possibly can.

Their employees are genuinely polite and helpful - more than I can say for 90% of retail. It's almost like customer service dynamics change with job satisfaction...

ferretman:If everyone's wages increase the product cost will increase and there will be less jobs.

And that does not follow. The answer is like your sisters relationship status, it's complicated. When you increase low end wages that changes the income distribution, but effects on total income and economic growth are murkier. In general economists that try to honestly study the effects of minimum wage increases don't find evidence for job losses.

Funny how the Fark-libs are always the ones to criticize and denigrate others but when it comes to themselves taking some sort of action that they are preaching others to do .. There is always an excuse why they can't or couldn't..... shocked.

And anyone can say whatever they like online with little way to fact check. I could say I have a 12" wang, a Bentley, and a standing booty call arrangement with Olivia Munn, but that doesn't make any of that true.

It's not difficult to run a successful business if you've got money to start with and you don't mind treating your employees like a commodity, paying the lowest wages you can get away with while extracting the most output.

So if it isn't difficult do you run a successful small business?

I have to get in on this I own a small business and I work hard everyday, It took me hard work to build this business and it takes hard work to keep money flowing in and that happens because of ME, ME, ,ME. Unskilled labor is a dime a dozen. When I find someone who is special does what needs to be done not full of shiat, I treat them very well as I want to keep them, otherwise you DEMAND a raise FARK off! Find another job and start your own business hot shot!

Sorry, but McDonald's is an entry level job intended for teenagers. It is there to teach them the value of hard work. The importance of money and responsibility. And further, I'm sorry but McDonald's is not intended to be long term employment for anyone. If wages increased too much, many more people might want a job there and that is not how the McDonald's model works. I would not pay 68 cents more for a Big Mac, especially not for this reason. McDonald's is the way it is for a reason and it works quite well for them. Don't like it? Move on. Because that's the whole idea.

Yeah_Right:bbfreak: MatrixOutsider: If you chose not to go to school or learn a skilled trade, then why is it McDonalds problem if you chose to work for them at an agreed upon hourly wage that is common for an unskilled worker?

Well, it should be something you care about seeing as a taxpayer you pay for McDonalds/Wal-Mart employees to live off welfare to make up the difference.

If your job mainly consists of running a register, filling/emptying fry baskets, stocking shelves or collecting shopping carts - you're a fool if you consider it long-term life-sustaining employment. Jobs like these are - and always have been - for high-school and college age kids to put a few bucks in their pocket - and perhaps a second part-time job to augment one's full-time career income.

Right out of H/S - I worked for a department store for a year. There was no way in hell I would have ever considered staying in that position for 40 years, and 'retiring' from that place. No one should. I did it to save money for college expenses, period. At the time, 80% of the people who worked there were people around my age. Anyone who was older was in Management --- they were certainly paid much more then the floor staff was - and they were never stocking shelves, running the register, or collecting the shopping carts.

Nope. MYTH 1: Most retail workers are teenagers with little education or experience. Not so: according to the National Retail Federation, 70 percent of workers are older than 25 and more than half have a college education.

JonnyG:Sorry, but McDonald's is an entry level job intended for teenagers. It is there to teach them the value of hard work. The importance of money and responsibility. And further, I'm sorry but McDonald's is not intended to be long term employment for anyone. If wages increased too much, many more people might want a job there and that is not how the McDonald's model works. I would not pay 68 cents more for a Big Mac, especially not for this reason. McDonald's is the way it is for a reason and it works quite well for them. Don't like it? Move on. Because that's the whole idea.

bojon:Most franchisees have invested their life savings and are mortgaged to the hilt. It is called "Taking a risk".

And it wouldn't be a risk if there wasn't a chance of failure. I can't recall a single time I've seen a McDonalds close that wasn't just moving to a better location. If the owners are overextended, that's on them.

BojanglesPaladin:'So what if paying these wages drives established businesses with a proven business model out of business, leaving all the employees unemployed. Somehow (magically) some as yet undetermined magical mystery fast food chain will poof into existence offering an even higher wage (by serving unicorn burgers) and everyone will live happily ever after.'

Have you somehow not noticed that Burger King, Chik-Fil-A, Wendy's, Subway, Jack in the Box, Bojangles, Whataburger, Sonic, White Castle, etc. ALL follow the same basic wage levels? Surely if there was some heretofore amazing fast food business model that worked by paying high turnover unskilled workers double the prevailing wage, they would be a break-away success in the last 60 years of fast food?

This is a breakdown for an average McDonald's franchise expenses I found:

Crew payroll is listed at $540,000. Considering some employees are already making minimum wage, let's say we need to make it $1,000,000 in payroll expenses to pay everyone $15/hour.

A big area I can see right off the bat is 'rent and fees'. That number seems awfully high just for rent on the land/building, so franchise fees are likely pretty dang high. An independent place wouldn't have to pay franchise fees, so let's say that they could search for a more affordable location, get rid of the franchise fees, and cut that number in half. Boom, we're already at $735,700 for payroll. Food costs are listed at 30%, most restaurants try to stay closer to 20%. Since the crew is being paid more we can find more skilled workers who can break down raw ingredients to save money on food costs, bake bread fresh, grind meat, etc, to make a higher quality product and reduce costs. Going to 20% food costs would bring the payroll figure up to $1,005,700, we're there already without even looking into savings on paper products, insurance, advertising or landscaping (some additional savings would be necessary due to the higher payroll taxes, but the point is, it can be done). That's it, no loss in profit margins, no raising prices. A place willing to operate on a lower total annual profit or willing to raise prices some could do even better.

Carn:I think paying people a wage that they could actually live off of is a horrible idea, because I'm a soulless vampire who would murder my mother for a quarter.

Fast food jobs were never meant for adults to make a living wage at....they are for teens and young people living at home going to school to work as a "FIRST" job because it is a skill less job. If you can't make it flipping hamburgers then get your GED and stop blaming everyone else. The Government will give you grants for a trade school.